


Folklore for the Detroit Motorist

by coramatus



Series: Motorcity Minutes [2]
Category: Motorcity (Cartoon)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-25
Updated: 2018-11-25
Packaged: 2019-08-29 00:07:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16733256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coramatus/pseuds/coramatus
Summary: The stories they tell in Motorcity.





	Folklore for the Detroit Motorist

It’s not something you think about everyday in Motorcity. Not when your life is busy enough trying to scrape by with enough food, bartering items, and decent shelter, never mind having to scramble when the gangs get up to their usual nonsense or Kane opts to level the undercity again or the local ecoterrorists decide to test their concoctions on the populace.  
  
But sometimes… when the moisture of the earth rises up as hazy fog to cover the roads in a shroud of impenetrable white… when things under the hood of a car start to rattle and groan as warning signs from internal sensors blink to life… when the periodic attacks from Deluxe turn commuting into a heart-stopping thrill ride…  
  
That’s when the stories come floating back to the front of your mind.  
  
Grim little tellings of gruesome deaths and horrific injuries passed along like ancient fairy tales, words of warning to scare the inexperienced into thinking twice.  
  
Sharp reminders that motorists of Detroit must always be at their best.  
  
For there are plenty of stories of those who weren’t.  
  
Stories of the preventable.  
  
(“Keep your parts in top shape or else you’ll go out like ‘ol Jimmy-Dave Johnson. Guy kept puttin’ off his tune-up, always sayin’ ‘C’mon! What’s the big deal? I ain’t got the money!’ This goes on so long, that on the one day he’s bein’ chased by one o’ the gangs, his engine starts actin’ up. BOOM! Smoke comes pourin’ outta his hood an’ he’s drivin’ blind. Bastard hits a bump, he goes flyin’ right into the fourth story of this empty building like a missile. BAM! Dead on impact…”)  
  
Stories of the careless.  
  
(“My great-granny told me a story about this chick she knew who didn’t ever wear her seatbelt. Girl’s all like ‘Imma perfect driver! I ain’t never got dinged once!’ Sure enough, girl crashes one day at three-hundred an hour. By the time they found her smashed up car, they don’t find her. All they find is this bloody hole smashed through the windshield and a big red smear on the pavement…”)  
  
Stories of the outright stupid.  
  
(“Oh man! You don’t know about this?! So there’s this story- OK, well, it’s more of an urban legend that people passed around in my neighborhood, but basically this couple’s out on the road when one of them starts giving the other roadhead. Of course, because they’re going at like four-fifty they crash and die horribly except it’s way worse because the one giving head gets decapitated by like the steering wheel or something! You really never-? OK, well now you know…”)  
  
Even stories of the old days still see circulation.  
  
(Deluxe loves to crow these to anyone who stares mesmerized at the colorful, roaring machines that sometimes go tearing through their city. Tellings of a time when death could come at a moment’s notice. That innocent people died because of drunkards at the wheel, because of absent-minded multitaskers, because of people too focused on their own nonsense to pay attention to the road. That those who sat behind the wheel killed and were killed alike.)  
  
(Motorcity’s take on these old tales is that they happened because not enough people respected the power of their vehicle. That those who saw a car as merely a tool as simple as a screwdriver rather than a multi-ton death machine paid for it with their lives.)  
  
And if the stories don’t do it?  
  
Then perhaps the sight of the twisted, charred metal-polymer wrecks scattered about the many buildings, streets, and ramps of Old Detroit will.  
  
Too damaged to bother repairing, too sacred to remove from their final resting place; they lay there with metal plates bearing welded names and dates riveted in remembrance, covered in offerings of good-bye letters written on dirty scraps, of tiny holo-projectors eternally displaying pictures and vids of the deceased in life, of painted aluminum flowers to replace the real ones that few can afford. Each ruin of a car stands as a sanctified site that no gang would dare vandalize or steal from.  
  
(Because they know full well that it could be them someday.)


End file.
